


thaw

by songs



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Vignette, i love death and emo-ness and i'm sorry i'm so rusty y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8616505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songs/pseuds/songs
Summary: Because this— this haunting he feels whenever he so much as thinks of Yuuri Katsuki is a new-old thing, a revived emotion he’s long since snuffed out like candlelight. Boys do not love boys. Men do not belong with men. Only now, the candle is a flame, an oil-spill set aglow, and Viktor has no way of crawling out unscathed.





	

**i.**

 

Viktor Nikiforov is not a whimsical man.

 

Perhaps it’s his reputation, his legacy. But it holds no water. The ice has always been unkind to caprice. There is a pronounced difference between halfhearted and not, dreams and dedication.

 

Viktor has always been drawn to the beauty of the sport. The wonder-world, the applause, the swan-movements and songs. He would keep old cassette recordings of the Olympics in his childhood bedroom— hidden under jerseys and notebooks and anything else that would keep his mother from turning her nose and saying, _Viktor, Viktor, when will you let this go? This ugly thing. You’re a boy, a_ boy _. Don’t you know what you are?_

So Viktor let go. Of his mother’s anger and his father’s absence. Of the swell of disappointment that would surface whenever he skated to an audience of strangers. He kept on and on and on, and now he is here, standing, skating along a diamond-rink of blood and soul and effort. It’s a lovely place, a winning space, a pretty photo on a cellphone-app, a glossy magazine clipping, gilded as a dream.

 

And it is lonely. He refuses to admit as much, because it feels an awful lot like losing. And Viktor Nikiforov does not lose.

 

Not until he meets _him._

**ii.**

 

Yuuri Katsuki is a strange thing. Meek and mild and mostly medal-less. A wallflower in a garden of a sport. But his skating— his skating is none of that.

 

He skates with something that is too vague to pinpoint and too beautiful to ignore. It would be foolish to say Yuuri transforms into a different being on the ice. He doesn’t. Rather, he seems to unfurl, to bloom from someplace deep within. In Yuuri Katsuki’s skating, Viktor sees fear and yearning, loathing and loving, passion and patience and grit that has no place off the podium, no place in being bottled away or secret.

 

Viktor Nikiforov is not whimsical. When he seeks out Yuuri Katsuki, he is being willful. There is a pull, a force, none if it touched by fancy.

 

Viktor decides to teach him. He does not expect to be the one to learn.

 

**iii.**

 

“Again,” Viktor says, during practice. “Do it again, again, and then again.”

 

_Stop,_ Viktor’s mother used to say, _End this, end this, end this._

Yuuri looks at him with his bottomless eyes and his over-long lashes and says, “Fine.”

 

And that single, bullish word is imbued with every ounce of impatience and anger and starry-eyed loyalty that has kept him working with Viktor thus far. There is something else there, too, but Viktor has heard his fair share of fables about fishing in empty wells.

 

“Go on,” he says, but even then, he is not prepared for the moment that Yuuri takes off and jumps.

 

 

**iv.**

 

“You’ve never been _stargazing_?” Yuuri asks one night, incredulous.

 

“I prefer to go _bar-_ gazing,” Viktor tells him, with a wink. At Yuuri’s unimpressed expression, he adds, mock-serious: “Skating rinks don’t have stars, you know. Yuu _-ri_ , maybe you should focus more on being a star _yourself._ ”

 

“But that’s _you_ ,” Yuuri mumbles, almost out of earshot. He sifts like a ghost through the rural Hasetsu-streets. He looks every bit a phantom. And to the world, there are two Yuuri’s that exist: the shy, fitful boy from Kyuushu and the slow-paced skater on center stage. But Viktor is starting to see that neither is quite right. Yuuri is sarcastic, Yuuri is proud, Yuuri is kind, Yuuri is a sore loser, obsessed with perfection. He is everything a champion should be. He is, he _is._

 

Aloud, Viktor asks, “Is it now?”

 

Yuuri’s ears go pink.

 

**v.**

 

Their hotel-room in China is cramped and warm and perfect. Or so Viktor thinks. He enjoys the proximity, the heightened closeness. Between the two of them, every breath and measured movement aligns like a spell. Some dark, ugly crevice in Viktor’s mind says, _Shameful._ Viktor stifles it. Because this— this _haunting_ he feels whenever he so much as _thinks_ of Yuuri Katsuki is a new-old thing, a revived emotion he’s long since snuffed out like candlelight. _Boys do not love boys. Men do not belong with men._ Only now, the candle is a flame, an oil-spill set aglow, and Viktor has no way of crawling out unscathed.

 

_Why did you come here?_ Viktor has heard variations of this question a thousand times since becoming a coach. What he finds is that there is no clear-cut answer, no buzzword he can give to sate anyone. He is not like Yuuri in that sense— honest, earnest Yuuri Katsuki, who skates from some fraught, unbidden place, who skates for love and hope and pork-cutlet bowls all in the span of a single song, a single flip. _Why do you skate? Why are you here?_ Viktor cannot answer. Perhaps he is not whimsical, but Yakov has told him, time and time again, that he has the makings of a fool. Which is not untrue.

 

Now, he lies alongside Yuuri, flirting with ideas like lips-on-lips and hands drawn through hair. He does not pine for Yuuri like some moonstruck child. Rather, he finds himself at peace. And peace is an understanding thing, a comfortable thing, but it is not absent of surprises. Viktor thought he would be pushing Yuuri to his limits, to the great beyond, to stardom.

 

But Yuuri pushes back. Always, and twice as hard.

 

**vi.**

 

“You know,” Yuuri says, against his lips, “I didn’t think our first kiss would be on national television.”

 

Viktor laughs, and it’s a surprised, silver-sound. “You’ve been thinking of our first kiss, too?”

 

_Too._ Viktor hadn’t meant to say it. For all his false openness behind microphones and gaudy medals and screens, Viktor, at the core, is a private being, an irritatingly layered creature that no one has ever taken the time to try and crack—

 

“You came to my house,” Yuuri says, “naked. After a ten-hour plane-ride from Russia.” Viktor squints at him as Yuuri goes on, “And we shared a bed. Many beds. You never wore a short for longer than 0.3 seconds whenever were were alone. I LITERALLY GAVE A SPEECH ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU, DID YOU NOT HEAR THAT?”

 

—and yet, here Yuuri Katsuki was, with a goddamn jackhammer.

 

“I don’t understand Japanese,” is what Viktor eventually says. “Your speech was in Japanese, Yuuri, you goose.”

 

“Goose?” Yuuri pouts, and it makes his lips even redder. “Viktor, you’re an idiot.”

 

“Teach me, then. And I’ll show you a _proper_ quadruple flip,” Viktor teases, “on _and_ off the ice.”

 

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Yuuri says, but his face is flushed. Viktor kisses his cheek, and then his jawline. With each feather-light, tender touch he is more sure: _This is right, this is right._

_Yuuri, you are what I came here for._

 

☆.。.:*・°☆

**Author's Note:**

> me: im on fic writing hiatus  
> victuri: kiss  
> microsoft word document: OPEN
> 
> PS. i wrote yuuri's name as "yuuri katsuki" as opposed to "katsuki yuuri" bc i assume that's how it'd work out in viktor's head, since he's russian. happy reading and can't wait til the new ep tomorrow!!!!!! ;;


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